Overview

""Essential reading."" -- Dr. Vivek Murthy ""This book should be at the bedside of every parent."" -- Kirkus Reviews Greatly expanding his award-winning New York Times series on the contemporary teen mental-health crisis, Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter Matt Richtel delivers a groundbreaking investigation into adolescence, the pivotal life stage undergoing profound--and often confounding--transformation. The transition from childhood to adulthood is a natural, evolution-honed cycle that now faces radical change and challenge. The adolescent brain, sculpted for this transition over eons of evolution, confronts a modern world that creates so much social pressure as to regularly exceed the capacities of the evolving mind. The problem comes as a bombardment of screen-based information pelts the brain just as adolescence is undergoing a second key change: puberty is hitting earlier. The result is a neurological mismatch between an ultra-potent environment and a still-maturing brain that can lead to anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges. It is a crisis that is part of modern life but can only be truly grasped through a broad, grounded lens of the biology of adolescence itself. Through this lens, Richtel shows us how adolescents can understand themselves, and parents and educators can better help. For decades, this transition to adulthood has been defined by hormonal shifts that trigger the onset of puberty. But Richtel takes us where science now understands so much of the action is: the brain. A growing body of research that looks for the first time into budding adult neurobiology explains with untold clarity the emergence of the ""social brain,"" a craving for peer connection, and how the behaviors that follow pave the way for economic and social survival. This period necessarily involves testing--as the adolescent brain is programmed from birth to take risks and explore themselves and their environment--so that they may be able to thrive as they leave the insulated care of childhood. Richtel, diving deeply into new research and gripping personal stories, offers accessible, scientifically grounded answers to the most pressing questions about generational change. What explains adolescent behaviors, risk-taking, reward-seeking, and the ongoing mental health crisis? How does adolescence shape the future of the species? What is the nature of adolescence itself?

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9780063433021

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Reviews

"""Richtel brilliantly blurs the lines between biology primer, medical historical text and the traditional first-person patient story. ... Richtel harnesses his reporter's eye for the human condition."" -- Washington Post ""Exhaustively researched. ... Richtel brings a novelist's knack for unspooling narrative conflict to bear on Shaw's real-life drama."" -- San Francisco Chronicle (A Best Book of the Year) ""A hard-to-put-down account of the body's first line of defense."" -- Publishers Weekly ""A thorough, richly entertaining and just-wonky-enough beginner's class in immunology through the case studies of four patients."" -- Wall Street Journal ""Keen and elegantly raw. ... Not just a morality tale but a probe sent into the world of technology. ... Richtel draws all the characters with a fine brush, a delicacy that treats misery both respectfully and front-on."" -- Christian Science Monitor (One of the 10 Best Nonfiction Books of the Year) ""Argues that creativity 'is as natural as reproduction itself' while exploring its evolutionary origins, examining its science and providing insight from notable creative types."" -- New York Times Book Review ""The Pulitzer-winning author unpacks the myths and mysteries of the creative process, and shows the research that proves why it's not just the 'Big C' geniuses who can tap into it."" -- Salon ""Engaging and lively. ... Crisp, conversational and at times darned funny. ... What distinguishes Inspired is its expansive range and conversational tone, as well as Richtel's ability to synthesize a lot of complex research, simplifying without oversimplifying."" -- Washington Post ""Inspired makes the convincing case that true creativity spans industries, movements, and endeavors."" -- Scientific American"

Author Information

MATT RICHTEL is a health and science reporter at the New York Times. He spent nearly two years reporting on the teenage mental-health crisis for the paper's acclaimed multipart series Inner Pandemic, which won first place in public-health reporting from the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism and inspired his book How We Grow Up: Understanding Adolescence. He received the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for a series of articles about distracted driving, which he expanded into his first nonfiction book, A Deadly Wandering, a New York Times bestseller. His second nonfiction book, An Elegant Defense, on the human immune system, was a national bestseller and chosen by Bill Gates for his annual Summer Reading List.

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